The present invention relates to a process for integrating document management and imaging system functionality with a user interface of a “foreign” or unrelated application in a separate process through the use of artificial neural networks.
All forms of business require record keeping related to employees, customers, suppliers, service providers, inventory, transactions, billing, payments, and the like. For such record keeping, most companies employ business application software which typically includes database management functions along with calendar and financial functions. In addition to traditional types of database records, it is also necessary to keep records of supporting documents, such as orders, invoices, statements, checks, photographs, diagrams, bids, contracts, disclaimers, and so forth. Many existing business applications have no built-in capability for accessing or managing digitized copies of such supporting documents, with the necessity that paper copies be stored. It is generally not desirable to modify an existing business application to add image management capabilities and may also be contrary to the terms of the license for the software. Alternatively, the costs and disruptions involved in installing new software with built-in image management capabilities and training employees to use it can be prohibitive. For these reasons, techniques to “image enable” existing business applications have been developed.
Current desktop computers and operating systems have the capability of multitasking, that is, executing multiple programs simultaneously or, at least, having multiple programs open simultaneously and quickly accessible. Thus, it is possible to run a business application and an image management program simultaneously on commonly available computers. The business application is used to process business records while the image management program provides access to stored digital images of documents which support the business records. The goal of image enablement is to provide a convenient link between business records and the particular image files related to those records.
The linking of elements of business records to images often involves keying the contents of a particular data field of a business record to the file name of the digital image. For example, a customer account number, an invoice number, an address or phone number, a social security number, or the like which appears in an appropriate data field of a record could be used as a key to an associated image. The contents of the data field is selected automatically, by the image management software placing a cursor at the beginning of the character string or by highlighting the string. The image management software is activated by either a particular keystroke combination or a mouse click on an icon on a toolbar or task bar, and a scanned image of a supporting document is saved along with the contents of the data field, and possibly other information, such as the position of the data field on the screen. The linking software obtains the data field contents by reading it from the display buffer or by intercepting the data as it is output to the computer display. The image of the supporting document can be recalled when the associated record is displayed by selecting the variable of the appropriate data field and activating the image management software which then retrieves the image file with which the data field variable is associated and displays the image. A process for such an image enablement technique is detailed in U.S. Pat. No. 5,586,240, which is incorporated herein by reference.
The image enablement processes described above are suitable for business applications which are text based since text characters are typically encoded in a standard manner, such as in ASCII codes. However, some applications do not output display data in a text format with some graphics, but in an entirely graphics format. This is sometimes referred to as “painting the screen” with rasterized or pixel format data which depicts text in any of a number of fonts of selected point sizes and colors along with various kinds of graphics. Business applications with such displays are not suited to conventional processes for image enablement.